City Council - workshop

All right, welcome everyone to the Asheville City Council work session on policy, finance, and infrastructure. This is June 23rd, 2026. We are going to begin our meeting with consideration of approval of the minutes. Do I have a motion? So moved.

Second.

All right, I have a motion and a second to approve the minutes. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, we've adopted the minutes. The next item on our agenda is Lenny's Law Resolution. And this, if it is the will of council, this item would then be considered at our evening meeting, which starts at 5 o'clock. This is a resolution that has been adopted by Woodfin already and is being considered by us today at the request of family and friends of Mr. Leonard Antonelli and Jacob Hill, who are two bicyclists that tragically died in 2025 on Riverside Drive up in Madison County. And so this, they have been working really hard to lobby the legislature around bicycle safety measures and also improved signage to make sure motorists are aware of cyclists. Council, the resolution is attached to your agenda for this meeting and then it is also, of course, attached for this evening's agenda as well. We will have folks here this evening that are in support and would like to speak in support of this resolution.

Don't think we need a vote.

It does say move forward.

I guess we could to move forward.

I thought we didn't have public comment in this meeting because we didn't vote in this meeting. We were just receiving information.

So let's just clarify this. I think, Brad, do you want to clarify that? I mean, I'm not sure we're different than HCD or Public Safety Committee.

There is no requirement that you take a vote. This was provided for you to be able to give some consideration to this and the additional tweaks you want to make to the actual language of the resolution. Your only vote that will be required will be this evening at the full council. You can certainly direct staff at this point if there's any changes or alterations that you'd like to make.

Mayor, I would like to make a motion, I guess, to add Mr. Alex Rosos' name to the resolution who was tragically hit and killed on Swananoe River Road by the box truck. And I did check with Mr. Rosos' family and they are in support of that.

Has anyone checked with?

The group associated with Lenny's Law?

I did not.

Yeah. We're going to be here so we can talk to them.

And then I do have a process question. Sorry. So when you said we're like public safety and HCD, in those we actually do have public comment. So I think what we're saying is we can kind of agree to make changes without necessarily voting on it and then take a formal vote in the meeting, thereby making a formal motion. not required. Is that what we're thinking?

Yes, Vice Mayor, that's correct. Your rules contemplate that you're able to give direction to staff with the concurrence of council. It doesn't require an official vote. But if, as a result of your conversations tonight, you clearly have a consensus of council wishing us to make any of those changes, we can certainly do that. As I already said, it's on your agenda, so there's no need to vote to move it to the agenda. That part's already been done.

Councilman House, could you spell the gentleman's last name?

R-O-Z-O-S. Rosas.

Okay, and at this point in time, we are not adding it to the resolution?

Well, there is potentially a spot where there's a series of whereas, and then there's essentially a factual history. And, you know, if that family is open to it, the families of those tonight, you could add another and whereas. Alex Rosen.

Oh, I'm sure we could amend it. I just didn't know. Did you want to do that without the family?

Oh, no. I think we're going to talk to them.

Okay. I'll text them.

It was a nice natural place to say it.

Okay. So no action needed at this point. Did you have another question about this one? Okay. Just the process question.

All right.

We're going to move on to item number two, the CDBGDR planning allocation. This is for information only. Here's Jamie Matthews, who doesn't have a title here. Give us your title. There you are. This was Alex.

Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. I'm Jamie Matthews, and I serve as the Assistant to the City Manager and Deputy Recovery Coordinator. I'm here to give you an update on the next round of CDBGDR planning funding. So the planning program is to support our recovery through updating existing plans and new planning efforts. This is the second round of the planning allocation. This round is focused on maximizing our recovery while also maintaining our core services. The recommendation is for a five-year strategic plan funded at $100,000. These are the previous CDBG-DR planning allocations that were moved forward in April. So again, the planning round two will focus on a five-year strategic plan We know that the next five years is really critical for our community and moving through recovery. This comprehensive strategy will help us align our recovery efforts with ongoing community needs and priorities. We are looking to create a data-driven performance framework that will help with accountability and transparency as we move through this planning process. So our desired outcomes. for the strategic plan. We want to establish clear priorities and a shared vision for the next five years. Align recovery with long-term community needs. Make sure we incorporate community input and offer engagement opportunities throughout the process. We'll define measurable goals and outcomes and track that progress. We want to connect our strategic priorities better with our budget process. So the project timeline, this will be a year-long strategic planning effort. We'll start with a kickoff, we're hoping later this summer. It will involve an environmental scan, looking back at what engagement efforts we have done, what plans exist. We'll move into plan development, which will focus on updates to the city's vision, mission, our values and strategic goals. into performance and accountability build out, where we're focused on development of the action plan and those performance measures and tracking tools. Implementation is the execution of those reporting processes so we can provide updates and better transparency to our community. So here again is the allocation for a strategic plan at 100,000 and the other planning efforts. There will be a remainder of about 565 in the planning DR bucket after this allocation. Today we had a discussion with the People and Environment Recovery Board, and these are the themes that they highlighted as important for us to consider as we go through this process. explore expanded outreach methods to ensure underrepresented voices are included, maintain a transparent planning process with clear communication opportunities for input, demonstrate accountability by translating planning efforts into measurable action, and leverage partnerships to address community challenges and needs. That is all I have for you on this recommendation. I'll take any questions.

My first question is, is this in-house or third party?

We will be using a consultant to help through this year-long process.

So in the coming few months, I mean, this 13-month turnaround, so the next couple months, an RFP kind of thing?

Yeah, we'll complete a procurement process.

Will we see any of that, or what's the next step we would see?

Approval of that contract. up to 100 but we don't expect to use the full 100 on a consultant or facilitator for this process right now do we have a strategic plan we just have our comp plan well we have our council priorities that use you all set our recovery priorities and the goals that are aligned with those and then reporting out on our projects but this is really to help us get to a better place on key performance measures and then reporting out and tracking.

In talking with our manager about this, it seems like it's fundamentally needed in order to kind of level up here for her to be able to work with the whole organization to get us where we need to be. So I'm supportive of that. using this funding for that purpose. I am too.

Same.

Okay. I think we're ready for number three. The next topic is anti-displacement and affordable housing project. We're going to hear from Assistant City Manager Ben Woody, and I guess we're going to refer some other folks too.

So good afternoon, Mayor, members of council, Ben Woody, assistant city manager. A couple of changes to the presenters. I'll be presenting. Dahlwich is not available today, so I'm going to do my best. to cover her portion of the slide deck, and then we're actually gonna have Sasha Bertinski on the end of this to give a more detailed update on the proposed home repair policy, home repair program policy. So it'll be me through the presentation, then I'll hand it off to Sasha. Real quick, just a reminder, I know we discussed, Darwin and I presented this in March to council, and this is kind of a combined project that tries to address some of our community's anti-displacement concerns and some of the affordable housing goals that have been laid out. So basically this project looks to develop community-driven policies, tools, and processes that do two things. One is help with necessary housing production, which is key for affordable housing issues we're having in the city, but as well as producing clear and concrete anti-displacement protections for most at-risk neighborhoods. Just as a reminder, the project draws from four areas principally. One is the missing middle housing study. Two is the affordable housing plan, in particular the anti-displacement strategies included in that plan. Six priority action areas that were put forward by the LNC, or Legacy Neighborhoods Coalition. And finally, just kind of the ongoing engagement that we're using through this process that shapes some of this work. One thing I wanted to flag on that engagement includes a lot of community stakeholders that I'll share a slide about in a minute, but also want to note that we've also engaged with some of our advisory boards on this. AHAC, P&Z, and NAC have all been involved in different elements of this. process for it. So objective for this was to use best practices and engagement to try to identify challenges, ways to address the housing crisis, but also minimize displacement. One of the things that I have found out of this process that I think is working really well is we've, and this is why I think the engagement is authentic, is we found a way working with the community to bring people together table that may not only be at that table together. So we've had a number of instances where we've been able to get different perspectives in a room and talk about some of these challenges we have as a community. The components, there's basically six components. We reviewed this at the last meeting and And the scope of this project is to be done at the end of this calendar year. That doesn't mean there's not more work to do or more things that need to be done, but our goal is to wrap this up at the end of the calendar year. Six components are consideration of a resolution, the displacement risk assessment tool, some of the interim affordable housing solutions, particularly related to the missing middle plan, anti-displacement strategies that we're trying to bring forward, LNC's required engagement partner in strengthening developed notifications, and i'm going to give you an update on each of those six today but i want to start with may 20th we had a stakeholder engagement workshop on may 20th cape department put a lot of energy into making this successful i'm not going to read all these entities to you but this is a good representation of who present who who participated in that um workshop and I think this goes back to my earlier comment about it's been pretty amazing to get different perspectives in a room and at a table together. You can see really a lot of neighborhood representatives on this list, developers, builders, policy advocates. We did this work in small groups. I'm always amazed at Asheville at the level of commitment we have from our community and the way that people are willing to show up and they definitely did for this workshop. Couple things that came out of that, and I think this is important. I was in one of the small group discussions, and I can personally observe that I think a lot of times when you hear information or perspectives from people that maybe aren't in your normal circles, it's pretty enlightening and kind of amazing. It can be very powerful. And I think also what you learn is there's a lot of common ground around these issues that we don't always see. And four things that I want to highlight that came out of that meeting that we think were pretty unanimous or universal was everybody in the room, and we're talking about affordable housing, missing middle, displacement risk, but everybody wanted to minimize uncertainty and late stage friction. Nobody wants to come here and argue about anything in particular. So the idea is how do we work better together to avoid that at the back end of a process or a project. Clear guidelines are important. People want to know the roadmap. Nobody wants to displace our local residents. I think universally, we want to prevent the displacement of local residents that are experiencing economic and market pressures. And then finally, we know we need additional housing supply, so we have to find a way to reconcile the density goals of our comprehensive plan with some of the local neighborhood stabilization efforts that are critical to keeping people in their homes. A lot of agreement on those core principles. We are going to have a project page up later this week, and we'll have a full summary of this workshop available on the project page.

Hey, quick question. So did you come up with a definition of what displacement means? I remember in HCD we talked about different types.

Yeah. No, we haven't yet, and there are really three or four different types of displacement, and so I do think that's work that needs to be probably done and agreed upon. I would say at this workshop, principally, we were working on the concept of physical displacement.

Based on economics?

Based on economic and market conditions, yeah. Okay. We'll talk a little more about that. Thank you. Good question and good point. And there needs to be clarity around that as we move forward. So let's talk about the key project updates. I'm gonna go through the six things that I mentioned, and each slide's gonna have a similar format. We're gonna start with the idea of a resolution. A lot of places are in this space. Asheville is certainly not the first to talk about anti-displacement and try to create tools to manage that. The cities that are already doing this, and there are even a few in North Carolina, many of them pass an anti-displacement resolution, so that's not an uncommon thing. Some have even went as far to adopt ordinances around this. And typically what the resolution does is it formalizes the anti-displacement efforts and it can provide clear direction for staff to develop tools and policies. Initially this was presented to us by the Legacy Neighborhood Coalition, the idea or the concept of a resolution. And so we're bringing this forward as consideration for council. We would need council direction to work on this and move it forward. Some of the early signals that we've talked about this in some of these spaces, there seems to be general support from neighborhoods and housing advocacy organizations on the concept of an anti-displacement resolution. But I'll give the caveat, everybody's open to it, but everybody wants to see the content of the resolution as well. So I'm not going to say it's universally supported, but I think there's an openness to the concept of it. We've done some research, had some conversations with other cities. One cautionary tale I want to give is Louisville's really ahead on this space in a lot of ways, but one of the things, they actually adopted an ordinance that had pretty rigid standards, so it really boxed in kind of the tools and the processes they use, and they are finding that that actually may be inadvertently limiting the creation of new housing. So I think the resolution just needs to balance the objectives that we're looking to accomplish so next steps on this if this is something that council's interested in the resolution would you would direct the city manager or the staff to develop a draft anti-displacement resolution the kinds of things that you typically see in these resolutions they signal a commitment to protecting the character and culture of neighborhoods while supporting residents that wish to stay in their homes Typically they acknowledge the past harms from historical actions like redlining and urban renewal that contribute to a lot of the displacement challenges that communities have. And then finally, they tend to raise up or amplify the idea that affordable housing crisis can also be combated or one strategy is to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing. that's already in the community and reducing cost burdens on vulnerable areas. You're trying to pair multiple strategies, and I think the resolution tries to lay that out. If council is interested in this type of tool, we could have it, I think we could have it ready as early as July, potentially August. So again, I will need some direction on that at some point.

I don't have a question. On whether or not we want to adopt a resolution.

I think whether or not you want us to develop a resolution.

I like the egg. Sorry. It's a little chicken and egg.

I mean, what's in it?

Yeah. It's like, do you want us to bake a cake, but we won't tell you what kind of cake it is?

I'll give a good example. I would go back to the bid when we developed that. Council adopted a resolution that I thought gave us pretty clear direction on how to bring that forward and what you were looking for. You actually are going to get an update soon that you adopted a resolution on the recovery boards that I thought provided a lot of good direction and next steps for staff. I think we look at this as an instructive document.

If you think it will help staff, I think we could handle it. We could get through it.

Yeah, most importantly, I think for today, we want to make sure that there's interest before it. staff is directed to go down the path of pulling the information together. It's not a heavy lift, I don't think, because we have some places to look towards, but just general consensus on starting to draft that for your consideration.

Do you feel that it would help guide the work?

I do. I think it would help guide the work, and I think the community and the stakeholders would appreciate some clarity that could come through a resolution.

I think it would be nice, too, because as I flip through this material and I've been watching some of the lead-ups, the series of things this council wants to do around anti-displacement as well as housing supply is robust. And as I talk to staff, it's like, do we wait to review all of it until the same meeting which seems like would be a very long time, or do we stagger and roll them out over time? And if we stagger them and roll them out over time, that opens up a trust conversation of, are we really gonna do all the things we talked about? So for me, if a resolution was saying like, here's what we're committing to do, all of this, both and, I think that, and that the community advocates and neighborhoods are asking for this, I think it's like an official step from council to say, before we consider other things, this is what we're committing to do. This is what we intend to do. I think that's a nice gesture to then have a series of other policy conversations that roll out through the end of the year, as you've laid out.

So two points, maybe one question. So the ask of us today is to let you know whether we would like to direct the city manager to develop an anti-displacement resolution, one. My question is, if we move forward with a resolution, what role, if any, would this resolution play in the UDO development that we talked about in our agenda briefing on Thursday.

Either way, but I've been looking at my two colleagues.

So my thought on this is that this resolution gives us direction around this project, but if it's the pleasure of the council to include some additional direction outside of that, that language could be included as well.

Can you say that again?

So this resolution will first give us direction around this particular project.

which is the resolution period.

The six points or six efforts that we're working on as a part of this project. But if it's the pleasure of the council to include additional language that provides guidance outside of this project, I think you could do that as part of the resolution. And that language would be included in the resolution? It would need to be included in the resolution.

So for purposes of the resolution, It says resolution at the top. So it would be the other five things that you would capture in a resolution? Correct. And then we could add some, add or subtract, obviously, but.

Yes. You've looked at some resolutions with me and you may want to comment, but generally the resolutions tend to signal a commitment by the elected body towards anti-displacement efforts and a lot of times it goes on to include some specific projects or direction for the city manager. So I think it could be, as Manager West has said, probably as little or as much as you need it to be. You're the governor and body and you'll set the direction on this work.

Yeah, I would agree with that. And Council, as I think Council's articulated, this is really a first step towards a process that develops a series of these tools. But it gives staff the necessary direction to align what it's going to put together with what we believe to be and what you may modify. to be the substance of that original resolution, which would then set the path, the roadmap for us to then lay the groundwork for all of those tools. But we hope that it would also provide, I think, a very valuable signal to the community, not just that you are taking action in this direction, but specifically what this is going to take while still living within your council policy level obligations and then let staff operationalize those things this there will be multiple additional actions i think the question was asked very candidly about how this will play into the udo that's certainly a long-term process the best answer we can probably give you is we don't yet know um but as these are developed there's certainly i think avenues where that could be incorporated into that long-term planning process as well but much of this would not think be determined until we had the resolution which is telling us what is your charge to take forward and to put these tools together for you it's almost like codifying the work plan that you're telling us that you're already working on and then remind me of the timeline of the udia

End of 2028. 28.

Yeah, we hope to have the contract before you.

Next meeting.

Next meeting, yeah. And again, I just, the concept of the resolution was initiated by community members, not necessarily by city staff. So we're bringing this on behalf of the community groups we've been working with along the way.

That's helpful. Brad, there's this kind of narrative out there that resolutions passed by this body don't have, like, any teeth. And so resolutions like this or say our privacy and civil liberties resolution, because these are directing our city staff, right? They do mean something and carry weight and have teeth or am I looking at that?

incorrectly no thank you for the question council member has i think the language you used is exactly the appropriate one um to answer that question which is council passes a series of resolutions over a variety of different things some of those are simply supportive of of other causes that you don't have any control over staff doesn't have any final control over just taking a position uh a political position on behalf of the city But when you pass a resolution that is in the form of a directive to staff, staff is charged through the city manager's office to implement and operationalize those things. So I think there should be a reasonable expectation that when you pass those types of resolutions that staff has been giving its marching orders and that we will bring something forward to you. That might then result in some additional actions where you would adopt resolutions or adopt other tools in the future, but those charging resolutions are meant to be directions to staff for them to operationalize the council's will.

Thank you. I would, I certainly, I would support this. I mean, everything I see on the screen looks good. I would definitely want to hear from my colleagues about what they would want to add, but I'm not sure anything like this has ever been passed in Asheville before, where we've officially acknowledged this and passed something like this moving forward.

I have a couple questions. But first I wanted to start with thank you, Ben. Whenever we have a really complex community conversation that needs to happen, you do such an excellent job mapping it out and making sure that there's lots of seats at the table and that people are included. So thank you for that. What I'm hearing is that the resolution is incubated from community and also that it's missing one part which is a direction specifically around the UDO. Am I hearing that right?

That would be my hope.

So if it has that in it, then I move forward.

Is that enough direction or do you need some more specificity around the UDO piece?

If you're open to sharing that, we can include that in the draft. What specific thoughts do you have around direction around the UDL?

Okay, my general thought process, and I don't know how to include it. We would have a resolution And then years down the road, maybe when we're not here, issues come forward and it's still an opportunity for the full body to still vote in a way per development in a way that does not align with a resolution that passed two years prior. I don't know what that looks like in a UDO.

So I can answer that, I think, in potentialities because obviously we're early in this process right now. But I think I would envision this taking two different simultaneous paths in that direction. One, I think this will provide, I think, an early and important philosophical underpinning to the process of actually developing the new UDO. along with so many other things that we consider to be important. Creation of housing, preservation of neighborhoods, this is is going to be a part of that direction that i think we would give to our contractor as we start putting together what will be the new set of zoning regulations development regulations for the city they're going to look to us for some of that feedback they're also obviously going to be engaging with community members but having a resolution like this that can be something very concrete to provide to them in the process hopefully what that does is build in to the entire structure of the udo even if it's not explicit This is one of the things that we want them to think about when they're coming up with recommended zoning and development regulations for any future plans.

Because really what I'm thinking about is really rightly understood. If we gave the direction that they follow the plans that we've already commissioned, those plans actually go into, with quite a bit of specificity, anti-displacement issues anyway.

I think this would probably help tie that up and codify what you're seeing individually in the various plans out there. This would, I think, add to that. But in addition... What you're likely to see come from this, at least in part, are some tools that would be provided to this and any future council as part of any development, legislative decisions that you're going to be making that would give you some additional information upon which to make your final decisions that would be unique to this particular category. Okay, so again, some of that helps to build the UDO. It becomes part of that fabric, but it also going forward would provide additional tools to council to give you a way to, based on data and whatever, what the tools look like, some considerations to help make those decisions with this information in front of you. So again, I'm speculating a little bit in advance, but we've talked about this a lot. So I'm guessing that it could take both of those forms in relation to the UDO. So perhaps the language is that This is intended to help drive the creation of the UDO in consideration of this, as well as help provide council helpful tools in its decision-making process on a case-by-case basis.

Okay. Well, then that's what I suggest.

Yeah, I mean, well, just to sum up, that was a long conversation. I mean, I think what I was hearing was you were saying you want to make sure that when the UDO is adopted, it's not contrary to anything in this resolution. So couldn't we sort of just say it's the intent of this council that the final UDO not be inconsistent with whatever direction is in the... Or, yeah, I mean, I'm not wordsmithing. I'm just trying to make sure I understand the intent. That's it. Yeah. Okay. Got it.

Okay. That was a good discussion. And, Brad, that was a great segue because we're going to talk about tool decks, literally. But just to reiterate, this resolution is really focused on anti-displacement. And we... We have talked about anti-displacement and their departments and different plans that recognize that. But I think what's different about this is this is interdepartmental. It's different disciplines. It's different programs. It's involving the community. So it's a more holistic view or lens into how we manage displacement in this city. And this is kind of putting those, coalescing that work together. So remember this overarching, we're talking anti-displacement and trying to manage that. Displacement risk assessment tool, I'm not going to read all these words, a lot of words on the slide, but basically we have an open group that's working on the development of a tool. And again, anti-displacement tools are not new. There are many others in the country that we've looked at. It's a public-facing web-based tool, and it does two things. Number one, it can tell you the risk of displacement in a geographic area. That can be in a census tract, and in some instances, maybe down to a census block group. So you can look and assess what is the risk of this geographic area of having displacement occur. The other thing it can do, and this is a little bit innovative, and this is the next iteration of the tool, is if there is a displacement risk, are there mitigation strategies that the developer or even the city could employ to try to reduce that displacement risk? So you're trying to measure vulnerability, and then you're trying to have a tool that helps you understand, well, what can we do about that vulnerability? And that could be based on the type of project you're doing, the type of policy the city's doing. So this is still... a work in progress. We've had four meetings of this work group. We meet bi-weekly. We actually have a meeting on Friday of this week. We also got input on the tools at the stakeholder workshop I referenced earlier. Our ITS department, they've done a great job. They're going to show an initial view of what the tool could look like on Fridays. We're making good process. And it's really important. The tool is just a series of indicators. So it's going to be indicators census data, permit data, tax data. They're usually in a couple of buckets. One is neighborhood vulnerability. So you use indicators to assess the vulnerability of an area. And number two is use indicators to assess the market rate of change in that area. So you're looking at vulnerability and you're looking at market change. And you're using that to assess the displacement risk of an area. The tools so far with our work group, very diverse, very robust group of folks that are helping with this. The tool is generally supported by all the members of the workgroup. What it does is it can create predictability for neighborhoods and developers, so from both perspectives. The tool provides an objective rationale for protecting vulnerable neighborhoods, but it also can provide an objective rationale for increasing development in low displacement risk areas. So again, the tool, as I say, it's kind of ruthless. It's just fact-based, database tool. And finally, In its perfect state, the tool would be used to inform staff recommendations and decisions made by this body. So it would be a tool for staff and decision makers that the community and the development community and anybody in Nashville would have access to. So next step for that is we are working on the first iteration of this tool. First iteration is really focused on risk assessment by geographic areas. Once we've done that, and that's really finalizing the indicators, we'll begin to work on the mitigation strategies I explained earlier, hoping to test the full build out of the tool this fall.

So, Ben, we are, just to be crystal clear, this is a tool that, I guess let me ask it this way, is there something like this that exists anywhere else in the world that we are kind of modeling off of, or are we building this from scratch and...

We're modeling it off other places, but we have to make it work for Asheville.

Right.

So a lot of the tools are in larger urban areas that may have robust transit systems and things we don't have. Whereas, for example, we are in a tourist-driven area that has other market pressures that exist in our neighborhood. So we need to alter the tool to make sure it works for Asheville. But we've had conversations with people in Austin, Texas, San Antonio, Texas, Louisville, Kentucky, There are a lot of examples of tools out there. Is this driven by AI at all? We have used AI some to help, but at the end of the day, I think we've still got to roll our sleeves up and build it, and that's what our IT department's doing right now. Or does the tool itself use AI? Tool does not use AI yet, but I think it could. I actually think we're on the cutting edge of that and the city's actually forming a work group to begin to think about. But yes, I think it could use AI. I think we should assume that it may one day in the future. This is a project that I'm leading, so I've had a lot of fun working on this one. Interim affordable housing solutions, so let's talk missing middle. One of the things we mentioned to council back in March was we wanted to move forward a couple of what we believe to be fairly non-controversial zoning reforms. Now, there are some concerns about some of these that I want to elaborate on. But basically, three recommendations from the missing middle study was allowing duplexes and townhomes in all residential neighborhoods. That's really opening up single-family zoning to those types of housing units, the elimination of parking minimums, and then increasing the allowable size and maybe the ease of use of accessory dwelling units throughout the city. So we've had a stakeholder workshop. We talked about these three changes in particular. We've been to a couple of advisory boards. Planning and Zoning Commission in particular will provide a recommendation to council. They're going to have that vote in August at their meeting then. Some early signals, just to give a little bit of insight or signal to what we've heard so far. To this point, it seems like elimination of the parking minimums has raised the most concerns with neighborhoods. Duplexes in townhomes, and again, this isn't universal, doesn't mean everybody agrees, but duplexes in townhomes in all residential districts to this point has raised the least amount of concern. There is concerns that remain, however, about maintaining neighborhood character at any event. Actually, the ADUs have probably had the least amount of concern to this point. I think a lot of those can generally be viewed as wealth building opportunities, retirement income opportunities, and just flexibility for property owners. Some concerns about implementation and enforcement, so that's something we'd want to track if we put changes in place. Again, there's a desire to recognize through all this that affordability looks different in different neighborhoods. And so that's the idea of when you think about affordability based on the citywide AMI, sometimes you can look a little more granular at neighborhoods and see a different level of affordability. So that's just something that we've heard throughout this process. And of course, everybody wants us to start using plain language, which I can appreciate that. So these are scheduled to come to Planning and Zoning in August, and they will be to you in August. consideration.

On the parking minimum, I know there's, that bill is on the Senate calendar I think today. I'm looking at you Brad because I'm trying to remember would it, I can't recall how it would affect residential development or if it was just focused on commercial areas.

You're talking about the parking minimums?

Yes.

As I recall, it actually was more broad than that. I think it might have included residential as well.

Yeah, it was sweeping.

Okay, well, so that would, I think, preempt us then. Yes, potentially, yes. Okay, well, so wait and see on how that...

So the timing of the anti-displacement tool and the text amendments, can you just go over that?

Yes, so the text amendments, the missing middle changes, are scheduled to be in council in August. Really, completion of the tool is going to be sometime this fall. So right now, as we're scheduled, completion of the tool is going to occur after the text amendments are to council.

You mentioned that the parking seemed to generate the most concerns. Can you tell us what some of those concerns were by the neighborhood?

Yeah, I think the primary one that I have heard, again, I'm not speaking for every neighborhood, just what we've heard, is it's actually more about, I think, commercial uses or users spilling into residential neighborhoods or the idea that if you didn't have any parking requirements along a corridor... you may have more parking that then utilizes the neighborhood streets that are adjacent to the corridor. So I think it's a little more about commercial spillover into residential areas. I haven't heard as much about, for example, we could say, let's remove the parking requirement for an ADU. I haven't really heard those types of concerns. I think mostly it's just a lot of commercial associated parking happening on neighborhood streets.

I actually noticed that when I was in Austin a few years back. And I don't know how recent their anti-displacement tools are in place. But it involved, to mitigate the commercial spillover, neighborhood permit parking. And then that came with a whole other challenge of enforcement.

Yeah. There's a lot of ways to be surgical with these amendments. There's a lot of different options that council can consider to mitigate impacts. So anti-displacement strategies. A couple of things we're working on, the council's probably aware of, is continuum of care. The COC recently received right at home grant funding, which is a priority for the city to work with the funders on that and the COC to implement that. Sasha's gonna talk about this, so I'm gonna kind of move over real quick, but the concept of a home repair policy, I think that's really critical. That's a really high-profile anti-displacement measure. And then finally, Council just did this, things like allocating CDBG steady-state funds to neighborhoods, in this instance, the lead and copper water pipe replacement, which is a burden that neighbors won't have to assume if they have lead or copper. Again, that's focused on some of our legacy neighborhoods and vulnerable neighborhoods. So Sasha's going to come up, talk about home repair. That's coming to you in July. Next kind of thing we want to do with housing trust fund is look at down payment assistance and homeowner type projects. So more to come on, you know, how we get these dollars into neighborhoods. Once we get through this year, there's probably more strategies we need to consider around that.

Maybe this is a good time to ask. Tonight, the council will hear a project that involves some down payment assistance. And basically, we're just going to roll out our own shared appreciation down payment assistance. So are we looking at adopting a program and some policy around that as part of this? Sure.

I'm going to have Sasha answer that question when she comes up.

We don't need it tonight. I guess maybe what I'm asking is, as we roll that out, are we considering that and what does it look like?

Yeah, we can follow up with a little more information on what that would look like.

I think it's great, just different than what we've done.

LNC's required engagement partner, that was one of the components of this project. What we've done, again, I want to be real clear, this is for city projects. This is for things that we do. So we have now named LNC Neighborhoods as a formal stakeholder in our communication engagement plan. So in the city, when we take on a project, we do a communication engagement plan and it kind of lays out our process. That is now embedded with a stop or a connection to a legacy neighborhood. So we have built in a step for our staff that do projects that requires them to make that reach out or that connection. And that happens early in a project because one of the first things we do is a communication engagement plan. So that's like an internal system that we're going to start using to do better about making connections. And I know I got to go behind time real quick. We have a develop notification tool. This already exists. You can sign up for it now and you get an email about a development and whatever. You can actually choose the proximity you want to receive the email for. That's been a good tool, but it needs a fresh look. So one of the things we want to do is kind of take a look at it internally to make sure it's still working as intended. It probably could use some enhancements. It's gotten maybe a little wonky over the previous years that it's existed. But the other thing we want to do is engage with some of the neighborhoods and some of the stakeholders that have been involved in this and look for ways to improve that tool. So I think one of the things I hear a lot of is can it just have plain language? Can the tool just tell us something that makes sense and is simple? And the answer is yes, and Councilman Hess, that is a place where AI can help us with that. So we want to try to connect with some of these neighborhoods and key groups and make sure this tool is providing the notice that people need to be better engaged with projects as they happen. And so real quick, I'll look ahead, and this is my last slide before we turn it over to Sasha. We were here today in June, the box at the upper left-hand corner. We'd like to be to you in July with the resolution if we can get that draft in a good state. The home repair policy that Sasha is going to talk about, the UDO contract to our consultant. We'd like to be to you in August with some of these early missing middle housing amendments. And as you can see, September and into the fall, you'll see the neighborhood notification enhancements done as well as the tool, the risk assessment tool. So we're still on track to meet our deadlines with this project. Any questions from me on the project overall? Okay, we'll turn it over to Sasha.

You did a great job. Thank you.

Thank you, I appreciate it. And the staff in the community who work on this have been amazing, so thanks to them.

Thanks, Ben. Yes, I'm Sasha Vertinsky with the Affordable Housing Division in Community and Economic Development. I'm going to talk a little bit about home repair. Just so you all know, some background. So AHAC, the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, has been working with staff on our home repair policies since last December. So they've been meeting about every other month to talk about different parts of home repair. They interviewed service providers. We looked at data. We looked at repair policies from other communities. So what you're seeing is kind of a result of all of that work. We're thinking that, so not working, sorry. So the eligible activities under the policy that they recommended and staff presented a draft policy, they discussed it and voted at their last meeting on May 14th. So home repair, eligible activities, health, safety and critical repair needs, you know, accessibility modifications, weatherization, you know, manufactured housing units are eligible provided the repairs comply with the building code, and emergency repairs when necessary to address immediate health or safety concerns.

Sasha, I have a quick question. Sorry for interrupting so early. I did see those AAC meetings. Is this the only place we're going to get the update or is this coming to HCD before it comes to us as a full council?

I believe it's scheduled just to come to council at the end of July.

Okay.

And I should have said that at the beginning as well.

No, that's okay because there are a couple of things I wanted to discuss.

Okay. So, sorry. So what is in the policy right now? It's a draft policy until it's adopted, obviously. Awards up to 25,000 would be provided as grants. Maximum assistance would be 40,000 per household. And then once the assistance goes over $25,000, those would be structured as 0% interest deferred forgivable loans for repairs. And basically, it's almost like a silent second that sits there. They would be forgiven in full if the homeowner remains in the home for three years after project completion. And the loan, like let's say a family gets their home repaired and they decide to sell their home or they need to sell their home, if the next household buying that home is income qualified, that loan could just move with the house, if that makes sense. But if they were selling it to not an income qualified homeowner, then the loan would need to be repaid out of the sales.

But the three years wouldn't start over with the new owner.

Correct. So this is maybe the most neediest part of this policy. It's really the priorities and requirements. And this was a very long discussion at AHAC, and this is where they landed. So for program priorities, households at or below 60% of area median income, long-term homeowners and households at risk of involuntary displacement, RESIDENCES IN NEIGHBORHOODS OR AREAS OF THE CITY THAT ARE IDENTIFIED VULNERABLE TO DISPLACEMENT OR DISINVESTMENT. AND THE IMPORTANT THING HERE IS IT'S NOT INTENDED TO EXCLUDE CERTAIN PARTS OF THE CITY. YOU KNOW, FROM WHAT WE SAW FROM HOME REPAIR IN THE PAST, YOU KNOW, A LOT OF THESE REPAIRS END UP BEING IN LEGACY NEIGHBORHOODS BUT THEN THERE ARE SOME THAT ARE NOT. YOU KNOW, AND THERE ARE PEOPLE urban renewal that are kind of spread all over our city. They're not always in the same place. So we want to be very careful about how we limit locations. And I should have started, I should have reversed these. So eligibility requirements overall. So these are musts. Household income must be at or below 80% of AMI. as adjusted for household size, of course. And then the households must include seniors or children or persons with disabilities.

Is that eligibility requirement relating to seniors, children, or persons with disabilities a HUD requirement or a suggestion from the board?

It's a suggestion from the board. And this is a, would love your feedback on this. So this is a requirement that we see in a lot of policies in different places.

So it's not a unique thing, but. So that gives me pause. And then there's another one that's probably coming up that also gives me pause. So what I'm thinking of is specific examples of folks I know who live here and have lived here for a number of generations. You might be living in the house that was your grandmother's and you're 55, but there's work that needs to be done. According to this policy, you would be ineligible.

Correct. If you didn't have children or you weren't disabled or...

Well, I'm saying if you don't have children, because I'm assuming if the 21-year-old lives in the house.

If you're 55 and you've got a child, bless your heart. If what? If you have a child still.

Yeah.

Well, then you're my brother, but yeah.

So I would hate to exclude folks.

And piggybacking on that, so I appreciate the committee coming up with the parameters, and it sounds like you've kind of looked around also to see how these are similar in other places. But we're going to have to have a partner carry out this program.

Correct.

Right? And so do we feel like we will have a partner? Sometimes I worry that we, like, miss. make our dreams and put it all together, and then there's like no one who can do it. So do you feel confident that we would get a response to this?

Yes, and thank you. And I should have started with a little more background. We limited this to just three slides, so I'm in a bad habit of just relying on what's up here. So after Helene, if you all, I'm sure you all remember, we pretty quickly turned around and made 1.465 million available for home repair. We contracted with Archer, which is a coalition of Habitat, Mountain Housing, Poderama, Community Action, Opportunities, and I think the Land Trust joined that as well. It's an amazing group. That's right.

And that's the target group here, right? Or could be.

Could be, yeah. They could apply. So they had no problem spending that money, and I'm sure we would have plenty of applicants to get this money.

I also have a little bit of pause, but I want to think it through more on the limiting to households of seniors with children or persons with disabilities. I just am reflecting on the... for new NC? No, the property tax grant program that has a lot of limitations, and we just relaxed some of those limitations right now. I just feel like, I mean, I can think of people that I care about that fit in all of those categories, and I want them to have access to this. But there just might be a broader range of people who really deserve this opportunity. Sure.

And the original draft policy that I brought to AHAC had those characteristics as priorities and not as requirements. And AHAC recommended them. And there was a lot of back and forth about this in the meeting.

Yeah, so maybe my question would be, can we just get some, like you mentioned, I don't think you said best practice, but this is something you've seen commonly elsewhere. Just maybe give us a little bit more information on where you see this elsewhere.

What age is senior, dare I ask?

In most of the policies I see it's 62.

I would like it younger than 62. This is one instance where I wouldn't mind it above 80, but that might be asking too much.

Yeah, we can't go above 80%.

Right, because of HUD.

It's curious, if it was a priority instead of a requirement, And then there was data for applicants. I don't know if that happened. But maybe then there's like a weighted, you know, maybe only half the applicants meet that. And then it could be broadened. Right. And maybe there's a process there we could adopt. Right.

Right. If we ran into the same issue as we do with our property tax grant program where all the funds aren't utilized because we've constrained it.

I like the idea of the weighted and then expanding. Does that make sense?

Yeah, I guess I'd rather just cast a wide net to start and then see what actually comes to, and then we can make adjustments over time. I think there'll be a long list of people who would want this and need this.

And I can talk with providers between now and the next when we consider it. I think that feedback's very helpful.

Are you getting ready to get to the part where it talks about owning other properties? Is that on one of your slides? Only what property? Owning more than one property. No, I didn't put that in there. Well, that's something that when I was watching the deliberations, that too gave me pause. Because once again, I was thinking about folks I know who've lived in the city for many generations. What I mean by that is I have a few friends, especially in marginalized, minoritized communities, it seems as though grandmothers would leave homes to all of their children and then two of the grandchildren. So then you have 10 people on a deed, right? and you're living in the house that your other grandparent gave you, but if we didn't allow people to have more than one property, that person would be ineligible under the recommendations from AHEC.

Right, and I remember you bringing that up during the meeting, and I do remember thinking about, you know, maybe involvement in heirs property excluding that. Okay. Because you're one of many and that gets, you know, it's not the same thing as owning two homes and having a second home. You know, we could.

And does that take into consideration the value of that second home?

No. I'm not sure what you're asking. Like if we said, you know, if you're involved in heirs property and that will not count against you.

If it's like a, let's just round up. If it's a million dollar home in need of repair, but the resident is 60 AMI.

I see. Yes, there are definitely precedents for that. I mean, that's, yeah.

I guess some of that language will need to be in here, right? Like the need. I mean, some in that case. If you own a million-dollar home, perhaps you can refinance and things. I don't know. But I don't know how we delineate some of those.

Or is it really the only category or income?

I think there are some agencies that actually have those guidelines in their own programs. Like, I believe Habitat has, like, the value of the home cannot be over the median value in the county kind of thing. So that kind of naturally limits it.

That is interesting, too, as we see property taxes going – Values going up so much and you look at some of these neighborhoods that are gentrifying.

Because what I noticed when I used to work for a nonprofit that used to do this very thing, we had at times difficulty finding qualified owners within the city. when the value of the home was maxed out, right? And then they couldn't have one if they had, I don't know, a carriage house in the back. Because then there were folks whose homes had appreciated, but because their incomes were lower, and frankly, their credit scores were lower, they did not qualify to get a loan. And if they owned the home, they didn't have homeowner's insurance either. there were no programs for which they could qualify.

You can definitely bring back clarity on that.

Do you, so do, on our agenda it says information only, but the last part did too. So are we, do you need direction from us?

No, I don't think so. I think the feedback is going to be very helpful in finalizing the draft policy for you all to consider.

Because it sounds like we're saying make it as broadly available as reasonably possible.

But still impacting, I mean, per HUD guidelines is still the lower incomes and the highest need first. There needs to be a prioritization. It can't just be wide open and anything goes.

So I'm thinking the 80 and prioritizing those up at the top. and maybe not having it just be for seniors, children, or persons with, maybe if that could be a priority and not a requirement.

Yeah.

My overlapping concern is that since the RENEW program was doing home repairs to similar guidelines, there is this other lingering group that may not have any support unless we broaden it, you know? And I know we don't have enough money to do all the things. But we do this a lot where we focus on the lowest of the AMIs and then the highest of the AMIs are out there fending for themselves, but those in the middle really get stuck. And they're teetering on the edge of becoming the lower AMI where we can suddenly help them. But I think we have to keep that in mind with all of these home repair programs.

Thank you very much.

Before we move on to the next agenda item, can I invite a follow-up to Lenny's Law?

Were there more slides? No, that was it. Well, no, there's two more presentations.

Right.

Yeah, so.

So that was item number one, and I got a confirmation from Maddie Barando, Lenny's Law. fiance and she's communicated with the Rosos family and both parties have agreed that adding Alex's name is appropriate and appreciated.

Does anyone know if Alex Rosos' father can be here tonight?

Well, he's working right now.

He may want to be.

I think we all are texting them.

Okay. Just make sure that someone knows to let him know to come.

Oh, on that. Okay. Maggie, you're multitasking me. I got it. All right, so we're ready for the next item, and D. Tyrell is here to talk to us about parks.

Good day, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. I'm D. Tyrell Metcourt, Parks and Recreation Director, also Staff Liaison for the Infrastructure Recovery Board. I have with me today Chris Hardy. He's the Associate Principal with Sasaki Associates Incorporated. He's here to review and share with you, as well as with the public, the unified design concept for the French Broad Riverfront Parks Recovery Project. As a point of information, earlier today, this morning, the Infrastructure and People and Environment Recovery Boards held joint meetings where they reviewed, they heard from Chris do a similar presentation he's going to present to you all here in a minute. ask questions, and share additional feedback about what they saw in the unified design concepts. Keep in mind, Sasaki is interested in seeking information along the lines to make sure that what they're designing confirms that they are on the right track, that they're designing elements, and that those elements are in the right places. Feedback that we heard from both the infrastructure and the people and environment recovery boards this morning fell into three different categories. The first being engagement and prioritizing low to moderate income feedback. It was important to the board that this project reflect the needs and desires of low to moderate income residents. It was also pointed out or expressed a need for the city and county to collaborate on this effort to benefit all residents. Flood design, there were some questions around the desire to understand the resilience of amenities in the design, so some of those programming elements. The board also asked for data on how amenities will withstand storm events. In the last category were questions and feedback resolved around connectivity and transportation. The board expressed better access to the riverfront parks from the surrounding neighborhoods. Even though some of those elements are outside of the scope of this case, the board put emphasis on making sure that we push for opportunities to better connect those neighborhoods, as well as there was some conversation around encouraging multimodal transportation use, including transit, as well as parking turnover with the North Carolina Department of Transportation project happening on Envoy, designing the project in collaboration with North Carolina DOT to maximize parking, and create turnover ratios that help encourage people to use multimodal transportation to this space. I want to stop there, turn it over to Chris to go through the presentation, and then myself, along with any of the staff, can answer questions that you all may have at the end of it. Chris?

Thank you. Thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon and I'm excited to launch into the presentation. So the City of Asheville hired Suzuki to help guide both the planning and visioning process for these five miles of riverfront park repair and restoration last fall. We started with diving deep into kind of desktop research analysis, site surveys, understanding the damages, understanding also what the community loved in the parks beforehand, reaching out, having conversations, and learning about what the hopes and dreams are for the future. And I'm going to compress the last year into less than 10 minutes. So right now, we're kind of middle of the process. We've done a lot of technical investigations on what's there, what are the issues that we're facing, building models to understand the hydrologic impacts of what we're proposing, as well as the conditions that we've now inherited, because the river's fundamentally changed. It was such a big violent storm that actually changed the layout of the river. And then also going through a community process to come together with what we would describe as a conceptual framework design. We have all the programs, we have all the pieces, we have specific locations for them, and we're confirming that through these meetings today. From this point onward, we're going to be developing what we call 30% documentation. That means that we're doing the first round of technical documentation that will be able to give us a much more accurate sense of the costs of these projects, going from concept to kind of more hard-line design. And we'll be coming back in September for a community review based on that information. Our first big community touch point in the fall as part of the community engagement campaign was focused on kicking off and making it feel like a participatory design process where the engagement was authentically feeding into and informing the design proposals that we had. And we had to start with a listening-based process, learning about the memories of the past, what was loved, what are the hopes of the future, both in terms of online surveys, which we could use to get kind of quantitative data and understand what the community is interested in, physical open house, which we had over 200 attendees, to do more interactive exercises and have one-on-one conversations, and then actually tight focus group discussions focused on a range of subjects. And this gave us some really great basis of design feedback, not just thinking about the programs and what kind of programs community members wanted to see, but also their priorities. Things that they really wanted to see from the past that will come through the future and maybe pain points as well from how the parks didn't necessarily best serve their communities in the past and things that we could think about building back better. What did come out of this strongly is the sense that there's both a strong interest in nature and restoration of nature along this corridor, but also that this needs to be a community serving active recreational location in balance. And this ultimately gave us a set of guiding principles, starting with working with and respecting the river, fulfilling kind of the legacy of Wilma Dyckman in this corridor, expand connectivity and enable safe movement, to balance diverse recreation with dedicated spaces for nature, and infuse the culture and art of Asheville throughout the entire system. Ultimately, the ambition is to be for the local community, but also welcome all who come and visit Asheville. So we took that information and we put it together into three different framework designs that we came back and tested with the community earlier this spring. We both had an online survey to once again get that quantitative information and in-person and focus group discussions. And this time what we were asking the community to do is not to vote on a scheme. We kind of dialed up the focus and the volume of different kind of themes in each scheme, one more focused on restoration, one more focused on active recreation, one more focused on art and culture. Instead of voting on one of those, we asked them to tell us what they loved and what they hated in each scheme. And ultimately that would give us information that could go back to the drawing board. and develop a unified scheme that focuses on the love and excludes the hate. And this gave us a great foundation for the next step of design. A few kind of key themes in addition to specific programmatic elements and relationships and adjacencies that we heard loudly was that we need to be designing for the next flood, not the last one. This has to be a very resilient space and whatever we build back has to anticipate those floods and work with it. It has to be nature first and then recreation within. We need to think about connecting to the river not just programmatically and recreationally, but also in terms of concept, in terms of ecology. It needs to serve all ages. And we want to restore what was lost first, but also build back better so that we have something that lasts for the community into the future. So we took all of that and came to a concept focused on this kind of fundamental idea and thesis. The river drives the restoration, and the city drives the civic life. And what we have in these parks, the space between the river and the city, is a space where we can bring nature and restoration from the banks into the parks, and we can bring the cultural programs and active recreation from the city into the parks from the uplands. And this gives us a vision that's focused on a resilient and connected landscape that has flexible multi-use spaces where we have active sports and we have active recreation, but in balance with nature, and that we move towards restoration ecology as we go down the banks into the river. So I'll take you on a very brief tour of where we've landed. In a lot of areas of the parks, we have some pretty significant flooding issues, which means that it has to be able to be tolerant to future floods of significant scale impact. Some of these places were focused more tightly on repairs and recovery, having more resilient edges to the banks and stabilizing the banks that have been scoured. But we also are adding in some key new programs. So for instance, we heard loudly and clearly from the community that having some sort of restroom facility in Genoa Park would be very appreciated. Locating it adjacent to the boat launch would also help with folks that are loading in and out of the river. As we go a little farther south, there was a strong interest in how the RAD relates to the and creating spaces that could be restoration spaces like pollinator meadows that can also double as opportunities for showcasing art in a rotating display. Now one of the things that's important about thinking about this as a FEMA recovery funded project is that FEMA won't pay for new art in the parks. But what we can build is we can build the pedestals, we can build the infrastructure to host art and to have art be aggregated and curated over time throughout the park system. This is a vision, a sketch, of what these spaces can feel like. One of the programs that was very popular for the community is providing a universally accessible paddlers launch, so that people of all mobility, or people living with mobility disabilities are able to actually launch kayaks. Currently there's not an accessible launch point along this park system. As well as having resilient edges where we need them, such as some of the armoring you see here is terraces, making them occupiable, so it provides access down to the river. and a view looking up Wilma Dyckman into Gene Webb. As we go farther south, focusing on the greenways is more about kind of the repairs and restoration. There are railings that are damaged, there are banks that are scoured, but not necessarily dramatically, programmatically changing this corridor, but also working with and anticipating other planned improvements, such as the Asheville unpaved trails that'll be added to the west side hills. And we have kind of two main large-scale programmatic spaces. One is French Broad River Park, where we have the opportunity to think about how does this space better serve the community. In this case, moving from the north, we included a wooded pump track, which was a very popular program that can also build off of and relate to the actual impaved trail system. The dog park being expanded and enhanced to have a space for both large dogs and small dogs, spaces for owners to socialize in the shade and have seating. Adjacent to that, there's the opportunity to have a paddler's beach. Now, something that's interesting from the flooding that happened is that the extreme velocity that happens just north of the confluence, which you see at the bottom of the map here by Amboy Bridge, had an area where it really scoured out the banks. Incredibly violent. The flow rates are unbelievable. They can move a 300-pound boulder downstream. We get a little bit farther north of that where the topography lays back, and there's actually an area where there was a lot of sand deposition. So this is building off of how the river's sedimentation is working already, anticipating that we could have a self-nourishing sand beach at this location in the reach. As we go farther south, you'll see that there's this flooded terrace lawn. So these terraces, we are gonna have to have some hard edges. Along this won't all be able to be vegetated natural edges because of the flow rates and because of the constriction at this bridge, specifically by the confluence of the Swannanoa. But we can make it places that are also serving the community and can be occupiable, and we can pull them back. And I'll have an image of that later. By pulling back the bank, this gives us some cut that we can use to help elevate some of the other spaces in the park. So if we're going to build a popular program, which would be a community pavilion, we can lift that out of the 500-year floodplain. This is getting a sense of the community pavilion and how it can relate to an outdoor event space. It could be used for farmers markets, special events, concerts, dance events.

I love that one. Oh, that slide. Yeah, I think those are great things to add to the river that have long been missing.

You know, having Carrier Park but having two places would be great.

Well, the farmer's market set up, the whole, like, the vibe is different. I like it.

It was highly requested.

Yeah.

It makes sense.

Sorry.

Go ahead.

You know, I'm wondering, since we're kind of breaking in, I was trying to remember the name of the group that came, and they were here for about a week or so, and it's ULI.

Oh, ULI, yeah.

Are any of those recommendations included in this in particular? I'm thinking about what they were saying about the historical nature of the area.

Yeah, so we read through all of the results of their studies. Some of the recommendations they had, I know, are quite controversial and a little bit outside of the boundaries. Yeah, one of them was like, not put it back there.

But in particular, I think there was a recommendation about art related specifically to the fact that actually the River Arts District is in what used to be a legacy area. Yeah.

Yeah, I think so. I do think there's a we have kind of folded in art as a program that can be an overlay and integrated in a variety of different ways throughout the park, specifically to we dove in a little bit more deeper about the historic legacy of this. And I could talk about this for like an hour, but to make it really succinct what's fun what's really interesting about this floodway is that it's been modified so much over time so the river used to run down the middle of the rad more or less in the past and over the last 150 years it's been moved closer and closer to west asheville and constrained more and more so all first was the trains pushing it in then it was kind of the depot spaces and it continued going on That means that we have a very impacted floodway, and it also means that it's a fundamentally unstable river. What's really interesting in this particular reach is that we're so high up in the watershed that the floods are deep, fast, and violent, but they don't last a long time. So that means what we're building back in the park, it needs to be able to receive water, and quite often water at velocity, which can be very challenging. In some ways, it's better. We've worked in parks in the Mississippi where when the flood happens, the flood happens for weeks. It can kill all the plants. It can kill all the trees. We don't have that problem here, but there's a lot of layers back there. So continuing along the park, this is a vignette of thinking about having the programmatic areas of hammock rows, picnic areas, lawn and dog parks in adjacency to each other so that there's things that all family members can engage in. And instead of just having a hard edge or more like a kind of a revetment or a seawall, thinking about how we can pull back those edges. And maybe they can serve another community purpose. So in this case, this would be the floodable terraces that can also double as an outdoor event space. As we go along Amboy, we're anticipating and coordinating with the NCDOT project to both rebuild and replace the bridge as well as expand Amboy. That's going to fundamentally change some of the nature of how this specific part of the park will work than what was there in the past. So now the greenway is to get to the greenway. You will go down Wilma Dike and go across the bridge, and because it'll be a roundabout, they'll have to circle around and go under the bridge. They'll fall along beneath the base of all that NCDOT is going to build, and then the idea is that the high-speed cyclists will go up onto a cyclo-track that's adjacent to the roadway, And the slow speed traffic will be in the park. And that portion of the greenway will meander through the park. The one big programmatic add in this area that was highly requested is a larger boat launch space that could be used for outfitters. And then the second major kind of active hub of the park is Carrier Park. And I'll start with the most controversial and most commented on element in the park, which was the velodrome. So the velodrome, and we heard a lot about this in the last year, when we went back to the community, we came back with three different options for the velodrome. We came back with, we keep the velodrome as it is, and we work around the existing velodrome, and we rebuild and repair it. but we keep the fundamental idea, but we try to relocate programs that were in conflict. We did hear a lot from the very beginning of the project that while there are people who love that program, there was also a lot of conflict moments of people crossing the velodrome to get to the programs inside of it. The second option was to rebuild with more of a standard kind of bicycle velodrome. What's interesting is the original velodrome is designed for cars, not bicycles. So a bicycle velodrome is a very different kind of facility and significantly smaller. And the third option that we provided was reimagining the velodrome as kind of a windy, multi-use bike trail that could be done at different speeds. What was most popular was rebuilding the velodrome to be dedicated cyclists. What was also interesting in this feedback, or for why we were interested in this, it frees up the site. The existing velodrome really highly constrains the site for what we can do. If we're able to build a smaller velodrome facility, we can actually cut much more into the slope that's between Carrier and the water's edge, and we can use that cut to elevate other programs within the park, kind of balancing the cut and fill, but also trying to balance the impact on the flood modeling, the H&H modeling. So what this plan gives us is the velodrome that is now serving as a polder. It's cut into the site, and inside the velodrome is a large-scale stormwater treatment facility that's treating all the water from the parking lots. And then that daylights the water in a large cane break restoration project. Cane break is actually the native herbaceous plant material that would have been along this reach before the Swannanoa confluence. Once you pass Swannanoa, the river becomes rocky bottom and it's faster. Up here it's sandy bottom. This would have been the indigenous landscape that we can bring back. This gives us the opportunity to have fill for the sports complex as well as the destination playground. And I'm speaking too long, so. This is a vignette showing how that velodrome could work as a stormwater facility and serve the cyclist community, both for the fast cyclists as well as the slow. The pathway system, looking at the cane break restoration area and expanded wetlands, and then beyond to the playground and sports corridor, which we lift out of the 100-year floodplain.

Is the idea, too, that the Belladrome can also accommodate skaters? Yes.

Yeah. And we're keeping the banks low enough that it can accommodate skaters and low-speed cyclists comfortably. If it's the very steep, like 33% grade, it has to be high-speed cyclists. Yeah. And then this is a vignette from the sports corridor showing how we start to, we are lifting up and we're aggregating these active uses into a kind of a high density district. We have spaces for picnicking, grilling, but adjacent to small kids' playgrounds, imaginative destination playgrounds. We have included in this vignette where else in the world would be the better place to have a giant Hellbender play sculpture. Personally, I think that would be really exciting. And thinking about how it can be less maybe out of the box, off the box kind of play equipment that was in the playground that was lost within the velodrome and thinking about how we can build something that's unique to this location in this community. And then as we move from the sports corridor towards Karen Craglin, we move back into more of a landscape dominated by restoration. So this is a riparian gallery forest that would be a water receding landscape. We did hear a lot of interest in community gardens and community orchards, which has a variety of programmatic challenges for the city parks department. But what this could be is a great opportunity, especially with some of the issues of flooding. is if we focus on food forests and we think about indigenous foods that we're growing from the native plants in this area, so thinking about things like pawpaw trees and persimmons, that we could showcase those species and have it be part of an educational program as well as for urban foraging. Now, some of these facilities I've shown you today are in the floodway and some are in the floodplain. Some are in the 500-year floodplain, some are in the 100-year floodplain. And this means that any of these facilities, especially any architectural facilities like restrooms, we need to think about how we are designing for floods. In some cases, the best thing to do is going to be to lift them either by lifting the terrain, such as the cut and fill that I've been talking about in a number of the areas, Some places it's about hardening the structures. Some cases we need to harden the structures and provide some flood walls. So for instance, if we do provide a restroom at the boat launch by Craven Street Bridge, that's such a low area and the water is moving so fast that we probably need a shield wall so any vehicles that are floating down the river strike the shield wall and bounce off of it instead of hitting the restroom that's underwater. So these are considerations that we're taking through to the next stage of design as we kind of kick the tires on these ideas and make sure that we're building a resilient system. We've done a preliminary cost estimate on this concept plan focused on land use costs, but also building in layers of assumptions and needs for infrastructure. This has landed around 63 million. Right now at this time, it's trending towards 60 million. It's a variety of the VE items that we are looking at right now. This does kind of match the capital stack that the city staff are anticipating from the potentially public negotiated PAP 428 program relief, as well as the funding from the DR fund and the hazard mitigation grant program. That said, this is all going to be advanced in this next stage of design to assembly specific cost estimation and the resolution and the contingencies that we are holding for needs to be designed at this stage will become much tighter by the time we come back to everyone in September. So we look forward to moving forward in this process with all of you and diving into 30% design. Thank you for your time. Happy to answer any questions.

I have so many questions, I'm so excited about this. It's exciting to see all of it. Part of what I'd like more information on, and it might not be in a presentation, is looking at the sections that are really looking at restored river edge and stream brink restoration. and the wetlands, I wanna just learn more and understand how ambitious those designs are to address flood mitigation and resiliency because you can have a wetland that processes 500 gallons of water Or you could really push it to a next level that we're really looking at significantly preparing ourselves for real damage. And I just would love to understand that more as this moves forward. I don't know how to ask it better than that. So that's one place of curiosity.

Yeah, I can do a very brief introductory statement where we're going with that. So we've mapped out the flood velocities and the existing conditions. Brown and Caldwell is our H&H modeling engineering team is working with us. And we've also mapped out the velocities, kind of every section going down along the five-mile scope of work. And what we are doing is we're matching different kinds of typologies of restored bank edge and armored bank edge to those velocities. So wherever possible where we can have a natural edge and we can have emergent wetlands going to upland wetlands, we're focusing on that. So for instance, as an example in Carrier Park, even though the water was very deep in Carrier Park, very deep, shockingly deep, It wasn't actually moving very fast, so that works really well for a living edge and using living for scenes You don't have to have a lot of structure to protect those banks in that location Versus we get down to just north of the confluence and the water is going incredibly fast And you can see the damages still today where it's scoured out and moved you know thousands of cubic yards of soil and Reventment and concrete in those areas. We do have to have a very engineered solution

So that's where the floodable terrace lawn, for example, basically is going to have a deep hole for a lot of fast water stop and then that protects the assets beyond that.

It's more that it armors the bank and it keeps the bank from letting go and washing downstream is the intent of all of the bank armoring on both sides. So in terms of water quality, that's a slightly different issue. And what we're trying to do as a basis of design is intercepting any stormwater that is landing on the site or moving through the site. through flow through wetlands so that the water is cleaner after it goes through those stormwater practices and green infrastructure and is released into the river. What this park won't do is it won't reduce the flooding impacts of these floods on other properties downstream.

Because that's a watershed conversation.

That's a watershed conversation. It's also we're not building large-scale seawalls to channelize the river or anything like that in the scope of work. I'm happy to speculate about that, but that's not the scope of work.

And again, I'm not sure if these are for staff or for y'all, but noticing at Carrier Park, a longtime business owner here in sand and gravel, are we entertaining conversations about a land swap with them? Have we ever? What are we swapping with them? I don't know, but we're looking at a $63 million river project. We own a ton of other land, and they're swapping the middle. I mean, it just seems like the conversation's at least worth it.

Can I just ask a question on that note? I assume they're located there because you told us that it's sandy there. Yeah. Right.

Like, and it's not sandy in other places.

Correct. But they're located there before the storm.

So the city team has talked with us about all the private parcels that are.

If I understood what you were saying, the floor of the river is sandy there before the storm. And now.

And the entire river has dramatically changed. So maybe there's another sandy spot. Yes, I just am curious if we're going to basically rebuild the entire river section and we have a private use, maybe they'd want a different section since we've just remapped everything and learned all that. It just seems like a conversation is worth it. But maybe you guys have already explored all this and had lots of sit down talks and that's the place to be. I just I'm curious about that.

To respond to the two things. First, I'll start with the river morphology. So because this upper reach is kind of is the slower moving reach, it does have a sediment bottom, a sandy bottom. And once it turns from the confluence, it actually goes down at a steeper grade. And that's why it's always been hard bottom. So even back in the day when they once had a flat bottom ferry on the French Broad that could go up to Hendersonville. It stopped basically at Carrier Park.

There was a what?

It couldn't, yeah, I know, crazy, right?

A flat-bottomed ferry that went up the French Broad to Weaver?

Is that what you just said? Yeah, it could only go basically from here upstream because if it turned a corner, it was too steep and too rocky.

Someone bring that back.

Yeah, so cool, right? Eventually it sank.

Wow.

So, but in terms of talking about hair and sand and gravel, we have, in our initial design schemes, we imagined it was integrated into the park and that it could go somewhere else. And given the pace of this project and things like that, I think the city team wanted to wait and have a longer discussion with them on that potential, so. Anyone from the city team would like to answer that? I think for now our basis of design is to stay out of the private parcel, but those conversations I think would be to the benefit of the park.

We're rebuilding everything. We should at least ask them for a meeting and talk to them is my two cents. And then the last one I'll ask or mention around is really kind of feedback comment, but $63 million project, massive opportunity for our community to really have much better resilience and updated recreation, very exciting. and we're gonna have to follow the federal guidelines of what could be funded, what couldn't be funded, and I know there's a lot of complexity there, and you gave us some highlights, but one thing specifically you mentioned is that FEMA probably wouldn't pay for art, and in this process, in this community engagement process, I've heard more than once, comically, where's that public art in the River Arts District? Maybe we look to our parks bond or a future bond that we'll probably talk about in 2028 or something, but it would be such a missed opportunity to have a $63 million new park and gorgeous pedestals with nothing on it. And so we should think about that now because I think sometimes because it's hard to find the resources. We stage things and 40 years later, it never happens. And so let's start thinking about a parks bond for art or something. I don't know. And that's one example, but are there other things that as we're visioning this, we clearly go, we want this, but it won't be covered by the federal stuff. I'd rather be really ambitious and have this be the best thing we possibly could if it means that we need to year mark future capital or plan for future capital. It would just, you don't want, you know, leave our shoelaces untied.

Well, I guess that begs the question. So the city has a policy of spending a certain percentage of the capital funds on art whenever we do a project, but we froze it this year. in the budget. And it's small.

Well, but not when you get to a project this size.

So I guess my question is, how does the city's policy, say we weren't in a frozen year, how does the city's policy apply to the use of federal funds? I mean, we're using public assistance here. We're using, hopefully, HMGP, and we're using CDBGDR funds. And maybe, I don't know if we're leveraging any lift funds or something like that for any portion of it, but I can see them all. If you don't know the answer right now, that's fine, but I was just curious if we're barred from doing that under the federal program or if we can apply the city policy or if you all have something to tell us about the planning around the art element of it. So we're going to note that as a follow-up.

Okay. Very good questions, and we'll follow up.

It also seems to me we have some community partners that may already have some plans and ideas around this in the arts community and potential for funding opportunities.

I just have a couple questions, probably simple ones. As part of the... input process i got really excited when i saw the kayak beaching but i noticed some people sitting in the sand was like beach and beach access more than just kayaks like people was that one of the options that people could have selected because i feel like we had a variety of like getting in the water program okay and we heard some interesting things um

Looking at the data, the river is, compared to a lot of urban rivers, very clean. Like there are moments, you know, I wouldn't swim right after a storm, especially near Hominy Creek, but it's a pretty clean river. I would feel comfortable having my children swim in it on a normal day.

I just wonder if it's more of a recreation thing, so I'm happy to hear that's part of it. The last one is maybe you've already explained this ad nauseum with your depths and your slow-moving water and stuff, but I just want to make sure I understood. At some point, we're expecting new flood maps. This is all in the flood zone. Is there anything that we need to be aware of or worry about about these incoming flood maps that might alter any of this?

Yeah, so in this process, we did do a full LIDAR survey of this entire reach of the river and built a new existing conditions H and H model that then Brown and Caldwell socialized with the state to make sure that we're going in the right direction on the baseline assumptions. Brown and Caldwell's also working with the state on that, so it kind of was helpful to have them be on both sides of the table for that conversation so that we know that we're going in the right direction in general. Now, what is very probable based off of pretty much almost any modification in here, because the tolerance for a net rise is so razor thin, I think it's .01 inches or something along those lines, don't quote me on that exact number, but it's very, very tight, that we will probably be looking at a Clomor-Lomar regulatory process through this reconstruction project. I don't know what. It's a map revision for the flood maps based off of this, even if the tiniest net rise trigger or modification. It can even be required for if we made it less of a rise.

That's good to know. And then lastly, how do we get a flat-bottom ferry back?

I think that would be great. Come on, entrepreneurs. I know, right?

I already asked the mayor. It's not something we permit or regulate. It's a state thing, so it sounds like someone could do it.

Well, as my understanding, it's navigable. Navigable waters. You wanted a dinner cruise or something.

I think it's great. You know, this is the thing. I am a boat person. But this is the thing about the river, and I said this long before the flood. There were really few navigable, accessible ways for the public to enjoy it other than walking out on a bridge that was meant for cars. Now we've got this Craven Street thing coming. But like the more opportunities we can get people in the water that doesn't involve like driving somewhere, jumping in a piece of rubber and getting out down there, the better. Because it's our river. It's a beautiful resource. I love that you said it's clean. People need to hear how clean it really is and that we should use it.

There's a lot of people who don't think it's clean, too. I heard about it from them loudly during the public engagement as well.

Well, thank you. This is all very, very exciting. And it's a very somber thing that happened with the flood, of course. And it's very rare that we get to rebuild like this, I think. So I appreciate the extreme attention to detail.

Thank you. I echo the excitement, the renderings are amazing. I love how much community participation there was in designing the parks. I'm hoping that we can make sure to constantly update the community about where we are with the timeline and the process. We get a lot of questions about what's going on down there and how long is it gonna take and if there are any temporary fixes we could do to just help people utilize, I mean, people are using the park to the extent that they can. But if there are any temporary fixes in the meantime that we can do to help people be able to use it, I'm all for it. I know like on the Greenway side, on the east side of the river, there are a couple areas that are calved off and need repair so people can move through there. And I know we were not wanting to start any work because it could jeopardize our FEMA claim and so on and so forth. I guess I'm wondering if there's a point at which we can ask permission to do some, I don't know, if they're in-house temporary repairs to make the park usable as possible. Because this is going to take a while, obviously. It's a big undertaking. So keeping the community up to date and informed, something that we have up to date on a dashboard or whatever, and seeing what we can do to make sure we can, Enable as much access as possible, safe access.

I noticed there was a lot of engagement in the community meetings. And it seemed like people were really excited. I enjoyed participating in it. One of the curiosities I had that wasn't coming up today, because this is mostly a cause for celebration, are there any friction points? It seemed that the velodrome might be the one where people had a lot of input and a lot of different ways to imagine it.

I think a few different friction points revealed themselves through both listening sessions and the open events. I think the velodrome was one, and it was mostly the conflict between people who just loved the velodrome and wanted to be a velodrome, and people who wanted to do the programs inside the velodrome, and the conflict in movement. Nobody liked the bridge thing that was there before. Most nobody used it. They would just cross that grade. The other friction point, I think, is there's a tension between really some advocates who strongly want to focus on restoration ecology and not having active recreation be in these parks maybe at all, and folks who really want to still have active recreation and kind of more active recreation in these parks. And so this plan is seeking a balance between those kind of competing interests, which is ideally trying to get to the majority of the population's interest.

Thank you so much.

Anything else? All right, thank you all.

Thank you.

Okay, quick boards and commissions. I think Alex is gonna. Alex, yes.

And then this comes to us tonight too?

Yeah. Yeah, she's gonna go over my vote tonight. There's just a couple.

Good afternoon, council. Mayor, Assistant City Clerk, Alex Smith. I'm going to be going over hopefully relatively quickly with our board and commission appointments. So I'll kind of highlight the main ones where we do need decision points from council and direction since we have limited time before the formal meeting. So jumping down, African American Heritage Commission, we do have a vacancy. We do have a recommendation for it. Riverfront. that we did not receive applicable applications by the deadline, so we'll re-advertise. Same with the Board of Electrical Examiners. The Clerk's Office will re-advertise for that. The TDA, because of the nature of the specificity of that seat, we did not receive applicable applications for it. We did have a couple people apply. They weren't eligible. However, the current board member, Lucius Wilson, is interested and eligible to be reappointed, and the TDA Board Development Committee does recommend him for reappointment. Design Review Committee, there were a robust number of applicants, all very good. criteria and expertise. Both staff and the chair provided some insight into what the board might need in terms of expanding the diversity of both expertise and demographics on the board. And you can see those noted in that appointment sheet. And that is for an at-large seat for that vacancy for the design review committee. The airport authority, that one is also pretty specific in terms of the criteria of who they're looking for and who's eligible. And the board and the chair did provide a recommendation. This person would be filling in for the current outgoing chair, Brad Galbraith. And the board and chair recommended Dr. Chantel Simpson to be his successor for that seat. The Historic Resources Commission, there are currently three vacancies. One of those members is eligible and would like to be reappointed for her seat. That's Leslie Humphrey. Will Hornaday unfortunately has served a number of years on the board and unfortunately is not eligible to be reappointed. However, the chair and the staff did provide recommendations for other members for potential appointment. They recommended them equally so there wasn't any kind of ranking system. They thought that those four individuals named in the appointment sheet were all equally, or sorry, three, would all be equally good fit for the board. And then the Neighborhood Advisory Committee, the chair and vice chair decided to not issue a recommendation at this time. Because of the infrequency of some of our advisory board meetings during this time period, they said that at this time they would actually recommend that council leave that seat vacant. Of course, that's up to you all if you would decide to fill that vacancy. We did have eligible applications for that.

What happens if we leave it vacant? Does that mean Dane stays?

The seat is vacant right now, so it would just continue to be vacant. It would not impact quorum. The board has had a few special meetings that when they received a task assignment, they would still be able to continue to do their work. But they just said that because of the infrequency of meetings, they've already had kind of a difficult time just building rapport with the existing membership as well as the recent appointments that we had a few months ago. Again, it's kind of up to this body if they decide, if you would like to decide to fill that vacancy or follow the recommendation of the neighborhood advisory committee chair and vice chair to leave that seat vacant.

I will add as the liaison to Neighborhood Advisory Committee that the special meeting was very well attended, and it seemed to be because the chair made a concerted effort with staff to make sure the meeting of the special meeting was a time when everybody could attend. And that's been really effective, it seems, when we have long gaps between meetings.

Do you have an idea about whether it should remain vacant?

I trust the chair to make that call.

And again, it would not impact quorum, just so everyone's aware. They could continue to conduct their work as needed. The last board for consideration would be the Planning and Zoning Commission. And all three of the upcoming term explorations, all three of those individuals are eligible and interested in being reappointed and have the support of both the chair and staff to be reappointed for those seats. That being said, we did have a number of eligible applicants apply for those seats. So we would just need direction from council whether or not you would like to follow the recommendation of the chair and staff to reappoint those three individuals or if we would want to reach out to any of the applicants for potential interview.

Can we chat about that very briefly right now? I'd be interested in moving forward since they're all recommended and willing to serve. Same. Sounds good. So we'll vote tonight on that.

I know that was a little bit of a... I WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU'LL HAVE SOME TRANSITION TIME, BUT ARE THERE ANY QUESTIONS FOR ME ABOUT ANY OF THE BOARDS, ANY OF THE CONSIDERATIONS FOR COUNCIL?

THE WAY YOU ORGANIZE THIS DOCUMENT IS VERY HELPFUL. IT'S LIKE EXACTLY WHAT I NEED TO UNDERSTAND. THANK YOU, ALEX.

THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. JUST FOR LATER IN THE MEETING, IT WOULD BE GREAT IF FOR LIKE DESIGN REVIEW, WE KNEW WHICH MOTIONS WE WERE GOING TO TAKE SINCE THERE ARE SO MANY.

Well, with design review, I'm going to speak up later tonight about the importance of potentially a CDC member. Now, I know it was the first thing mentioned, they need another architect, but CDC is our largest civil firm in the area, and their expertise is incredible. And if that's what's missing on the board, that's great. I'm also impacted by the comment around male-female ratio, but it's indispensable, the kind of knowledge that firm has.

And then with that in mind, will you pay close attention to the Historic Resources Commission, too?

Okay. All right. We're going to adjourn from this and come back in nine minutes.